


Hostages to Fortune (II)

by elizajane



Series: Let Your Indulgence Set Me Free [6]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Related, Episode: s03e08 Magic Hour (Part 2), Missing Scene, Misunderstandings, Multi, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3791512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taco Tuesday’s winding down and Nathan is getting quietly, deliberately drunk. He doesn’t think anyone’s noticed. Correction: He doesn’t think either of <em>them</em> have noticed. [Nathan POV]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hostages to Fortune (II)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serendipityxxi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityxxi/gifts).



> This one's for serendipityxxi because of keysmashing comments :) ... hope it lives up to your expectations!
> 
>  **Content Note:** This story involves Nathan engaging in mild self-mutilation as a (not very productive) way of coping with his Trouble. Just a head's up for anyone who needs some warning on that.

Taco Tuesday’s winding down and Nathan is getting quietly, deliberately drunk.

He doesn’t think anyone’s noticed.

Correction: He doesn’t think either of _them_ have noticed.

He reaches over the counter and helps himself to a shot of the thirty-year Glenfiddich, slams it back, and drops the glass to the bar top. It’s his third inside the hour and between that and the complete lack of sleep he’s pretty sure he’ll need to walk home at the end of the night.

 _Ah. Well._ It’s a mild evening.  

He considers the empty shot glass. Maybe another.

He’d missed it at first, the _thing_ between Audrey and Duke. Lost in the confusion of coming awake with Parker’s tear-stained face in his field of vision, the flood of relief in Duke’s eyes and the set of his shoulders as he hangs back, across the room. In the confusion of sorting through memories of being shot and of dying, Nathan had sensed the tumble of emotions thick in the air, had struggled to sort through them before -- but then Audrey had pulled away, and Jordan was there, and after that it had been a long sleepless night tracking Tommy all over the county, adrenaline-fueled and _focused_ and --

\-- and now it’s over.

Now he can see it between them: Audrey and Duke. They’d left for Colorado good friends, trusted partners. They’ve come back a fucking _couple._

He’s been watching all night, the way they’re newly aware of each other, the way Duke’s gaze seeks her out, the way Parker turns when she feels Duke looking.

How Duke reacts when he sees her look back.

It’s creating pressure inside of his skull, like a migraine starting to build, though he knows the pain will never follow.

Or if it does, he won’t feel it.  

It’d taken the first shot of whiskey for him to admit what, in that moment of waking, he’d hoped for: _The taste of Parker’s tears on his lips_. Admit what he’d wanted to say: _Duke, never stop letting me see the love in your eyes._ How he’d wanted to reach out and reel them in. _You were too far away. I died all alone. Never do that to me again._

It’d taken the second shot of whiskey for him to admit that he’s probably the one who screwed up. Again. That somehow this was probably his fault. That Audrey’s been keeping him at arm’s length, and now he knows why. That he and Duke have never repaired what went wrong between, and now never will.

The third shot just shakes loose the memories he’s tried to forget, tangles the threads of desire, regret. The last time Duke touched him before he stopped feeling; the way Parker’s laugh brings such joy to his day: The two people he’s always known he can never have -- if only because he’s wanted them so much.  

Nathan’s never been able to keep what he wants. Why had he let himself hope--?

He looks to his right. Duke’s toweling off glasses at the other end of the bar, making small talk with Eva Dulany. The tone of Duke’s voice is light and flirtatious, that voice he slides into when playing a room. But Nathan can tell from the set of his shoulders that Duke knows Nathan’s there -- and knows Nathan’s pissed.

Nathan can feel the storm coming in off the ocean, and he intends to be sitting here when it breaks because he’s ready to drown.

A fucking couple. He considers a fourth shot of whiskey. Hangovers don’t hurt anymore and at the moment neural oblivion is a pretty damn attractive option.

Apart from being dead. Again.

There’ve been times, since the Troubles returned, when Nathan has desperately wished that instead of his nerves his Trouble had gone for something more primal, that his Trouble had burned at the core, rendered him incapable of _caring_. Caring that Duke left. Caring that he came back. Caring that he’d gone and gotten married. Caring that now, apparently, he’s won Audrey -- and that Audrey’s won him.

Because Duke is just _that damn awesome_.

Because Nathan has always been, at the end of the day, _not fucking good enough_.

He’d thought -- he’d let himself think -- that Audrey was different. That maybe she saw him as he was, without pity, without impatience. Without opportunism.

He’d been wrong.

He needs some air.

He needs _something_.

He fumbles with the hem of his denim shirt, unpins the safety pin he keeps there for moments like this. He opens it and jabs it, deep, into the flesh of his hand, at the base of his thumb. Pulls it out. Watches the blood well from the pin pick.

Does it again.

Sometimes he thinks if he just keeps drawing blood eventually he’ll draw out the pain that’s locked up inside, like an infection smoldering in his bloodstream. If only he lets enough blood drain away, maybe --

Again.

And again.

He’s making a tiny half-moon of angry red dots, the blood running together, sliding down his wrist in a scarlet rivulet of numb despair.

“Hey.” A pair of hands enter his field of vision, one plucking the pin out of his fingers, the other carefully catching his bloodied wrist. “Nathan, no, okay? Not tonight.” And Duke is there, confusingly close. When had he -- from the other end of the bar? The alcohol’s fucking his peripheral vision more than Nathan thinks it should -- either that or he’s forgotten to eat again. Probably he’s forgotten to eat.

“You might need that hand, later, ” Duke says, in a gentling voice, and before Nathan can jerk away -- the buzz of the whiskey’s slowing his reaction time -- his ex-boyfriend’s taken the corner of the bar towel tucked in his belt and pressed it to Nathan’s bloody hand. Even drunk, Nathan watches Duke’s eyes warily for the tiniest fleck of silver, but he’s skillfully careful not to let Nathan’s blood touch his own bare skin.

Then, because Nathan’s watching Duke’s face, he sees something else rise in Duke’s eyes as he cradles Nathan’s self-injured hand. Something Nathan was sure he’d never see in Duke’s eyes again, certainly not after today. Undistracted by pain he can’t feel, Nathan finally takes note: a flavor of anger he hasn’t seen in Duke’s eyes since Duke left Haven, left _him_.

Duke’s angry, he’d gotten that. But he’d missed until now that this is a _particular_ anger, possessive and familiar: It’s the anger Duke gathered around him, back when Nathan’s Trouble began again. Back when, instead of being angry at Nathan, Duke was angry for Nathan, angry at the universe. Afraid that Nathan would damage himself too much and too deeply. Back before Nathan had pushed him away.

Back before Duke had chosen to leave.

This -- this is  _his_ Duke. In the flesh. With the press of a cloth saying: _You’re mine. You be careful._

_Oh._

Nathan hasn’t let Duke do this, take care of him like this, since -- well, since _before_. The gesture’s simple, and caring. And uniquely unbearable.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing, _Crocker_?” Nathan grits out, yanking his hand away and pushing back from the bar. Duke’s _seen_ and Nathan suddenly hates that he’s seen. Because Duke knows, knows that Nathan does this, knows _why_ he does this, was there when Nathan first started doing this, and that gesture just now? That gesture of _love_ and _concern_ and tenderness --

Duke had lost the fucking _right_ to that the day he’d sailed away and _not come home_.

Anger feels good, as it always has, because it’s _something_ , it’s steady and sharp and honest: the opposite of blunted and dulled, the thick befogged way he’s forced to move through the world.

Anger cuts through the confusion of loss and the pain of abandonment and gives him a pole star to guide himself by.

“So it’s not enough you had to take _yourself_ away from me, huh, Duke? You have to take _Parker_ , too?” He snaps, too loud, and before he can stop himself he picks up the shot glass from the counter and flings it at Duke. It spins wide, as he’d meant it to, over Duke’s shoulder and shatters two bottles of Cold River on the back counter.

He’ll have some explaining to do, down at the station, in the morning. He can see that on the faces of at least three cops who’re still there nursing their beers.

At the moment, he can’t bring himself to care.

“You owe me at _least_ that, Duke. You and Audrey. You at _least_ owe me honesty.”

He turns on his heel and stalks out into the night air.

...and there’s Audrey at the foot of the stairs.

“Nathan! Nathan, what --” She reaches out to grab him and he _can’t_ \-- he just _can’t_ right now handle her touching him. So he flinches away, lets his rage-fuelled momentum carry him around the corner back into the shadows.

She follows him.

“What, you won’t risk hurting me by getting involved, but you’ll risk hurting _him_?” He rounds on his heel, stumbling slightly, off balance.  “Forgive me if I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted. Am I so fucking _fragile_ , Parker?”

“Nathan, I’m sorry I --” She reaches out, but again he flinches away, backing into one of the pillars that hold up the porch.

“I thought -- you know, I was stupid enough to think that maybe you actually _liked_ me. That maybe we actually had something. Were you just trying to take care of me, like you take care of everyone else in this goddamn town? Is that all I am to you, Parker? Another Troubled person who deserves your _compassion_?”

He’s glad of the way she flinches at the tone in his voice. Good. She _should_ be sorry.

“Nathan, Duke and I --” She tries again, but he can’t let her finish.

“ _‘Duke and I’_? So you go away to Colorado for two damn days and it’s ‘Duke and I’--?”

“-- _Nathan_. Will you just _shut up_ and _listen_ to me.” And suddenly there’s Parker, her whole body up against his, shoving him up against the post, her hands cupping his face, gentle but firm, an electrifying immediacy of flesh and blood heat so complete that it’s painful.

He gasps, involuntarily.

She’s saying: “I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_ I pushed you away. I’m not -- I’m trying to get better at this, okay? _That’s_ what I’m trying to tell you Nathan. I’m scared; we’re all scared. We do stupid things when we’re scared, okay? Nothing that happened in Colorado -- Nothing about Colorado changes the way -- the way I feel about you.” She drags a ragged breath, hands forcing him to look into her eyes.

He could pull away, but he doesn’t.

“ _Jesus,_ Nathan, _you were dead_. Do you get that? _You were dead._ I had to pick -- to pick your body up and put you -- put it in the back of the car. _You were gone._ I can’t --”

And that’s when Audrey kisses him.

The whiskey in his bloodstream actually helps with the crash of sensation, dulling the shock. It blurs the soft heat and taste and scent and assault of her into something slightly distant, something half-imagined -- and yes, he’s imagined this, imagined it more times than he’s been willing to count. Until now, they’ve only exchanged half a dozen moments of skin-to-skin contact, but those moments have lingered, chasing the Trouble through his bloodstream like an antivenin. They’ve woken him, feverish, in the middle of the night from dreams that -- since his Trouble settled in -- are the only place left where touch can find him.

Maybe this is all some sort of Trouble-induced hallucination? Maybe he’s been asleep this whole time, and instead of being shot and resurrected he and Tommy are still on the trail of the Bolt Gun killer and he’s fallen asleep at his desk and --

Nathan would be more concerned except he’s distracted by the fact that Audrey’s kissing him like she has to make up for all the almost-first-time kisses that weren’t. And she’s good -- or perhaps he’s just rusty -- but probably she’s good -- because it’s Parker and she’s nothing if not sure of where her body is, what she’s doing with her hands, how she’s moving in relation to the people she has in her orbit.

He hears himself moan, softly, a sound swallowed into the night.

“Well, I’d say this is worth leaving a couple hundred dollars worth of vodka seeping into my restaurant floor,” Duke says, ducking under the stair to join them in the shadows. Nathan thinks distantly that this should be funny, somehow, or maybe alarming -- caught as he is in the arms of his ex-boyfriend’s lover. Like some sort of tawdry romance novel. He wonders, blurrily, if maybe he should apologize. Or punch Duke in the face.

Instead, though, it’s like -- it’s like Duke’s -- he struggles to make sense of what’s gone wrong with this night. People are behaving in ways he hasn’t expected. _People_ meaning Audrey, and Duke. What is _his_ Duke doing here? And why isn’t there shouting? He’d thought, somehow, there would be more shouting. And anger, and hurt -- he’d been spoiling for a fight, and then somehow they’d --

If Duke and Audrey are -- he’s _sure_ that they -- but then Duke should be angry. Instead, he’s -- he’s _fond_ and he’s _wanting_ and Nathan hasn’t known the weight of that regard since -- this is a Duke he was sure that he’d lost. The Duke he pushed away all those years ago. The Duke he thought _Audrey_ was going to have -- but instead here he is, _looking at them_ and --

Clearly something’s Troubled, somewhere. Or just plain old fucked-up. But Parker is here. And she always knows how to fix things, especially with Troubles involved. So he forces himself to relax and let her do what it is she does best.

Which, at the moment, seems to require -- _Jesus_ \-- her hands and her lips on his skin.

He focuses on the way her right hand has snaked its way around to the small of his back, the way her palm is resting, strong and sure, at the base of his spine, the way her fingertips have dipped below his belt just enough that he knows it's deliberate.

He focuses on the way her mouth presses kisses, along the curve of his ear down to the base of his throat.  _I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

He’s shaking, he realizes, hearing his own teeth chattering slightly. Shock, dulled by whiskey. More sensory input than his nerves had handled in years. Maybe he’s _still being shot_ somewhere, maybe death is an endless hallucination, time ballooning outwards in a neverending spiral of unfinished business.

“Duke,” Audrey’s panting into Nathan’s shoulder and -- _God_ \-- he can feel the damp heat of her breath, the tickle of lips against the skin of his neck, the flick of tongue as she licks her lips and clears her throat -- “I think we need to explain.”

“And this is your idea of how we move towards greater clarity?” Duke sounds faintly amused, faintly -- something else Nathan hears but still can’t quite believe, something deeper and _wanting_ \--

She turns her head, but stays where she is pressed full-body against him, as if Nathan’s a flight risk. Maybe he is. Or was. Nathan’s very much no longer sure. Maybe he _will_ be.

“It’s worked, hasn’t it?”

“Parker, what--” Nathan tries. It comes out a whisper. She pulls him closer. _Don’t you leave now_ say her hands.  

“Fucking idiot thinks--” Duke starts.

“Yeah, I know what he thinks.” Audrey presses a kiss into Nathan’s neck, pulls back far enough that she can meet Nathan’s eyes. “It’s my fault, Nathan. I’m sorry. I should have--”

“What are we dealing with,” he manages, “What -- what sort of Trouble?” It hurts him to say it, to acknowledge this isn’t real, isn’t right.

“Nathan. This isn’t a Trouble. This is us. Audrey, and me. In Colorado--” Duke starts, then stops. “Nothing happened in Colorado. I mean,” He rubs the back of his neck, “everything sorta happened. But in a good way. Nothing _happened_ happened. There was some kissing--”

“--and groping--” Parker murmurs, her voice soft and teasing. “I definitely remember some groping.”

“--kissing _and_ groping. And we slept together -- I mean _slept_ slept -- because you know how I, but,” Duke lets go of the support he’s been holding and takes a step toward them. Audrey shifts, not letting go but making room, and suddenly Duke is there, again, inside Nathan’s usual boundaries, closer than he’d been at the bar, and this time with no counter between them.

He smells strongly of vodka, and Nathan realizes the Cold River must have splashed all over him when the bottles had shattered.

“Duke?” Nathan whispers, reaching for him, hating just a little the pleading, desperate note in his voice as he curls a hand at the base of Duke’s skull, pulls him in for a kiss.

Maybe Duke will hate him for this, if the Troubles are fucking with them, but right now he doesn’t care. Maybe Duke will come to his senses at the stroke of midnight, or sunrise, or seven days or seven seconds hence -- but right now, Nathan will do anything -- _anything_ \-- to keep the look of determined, definitive love in Duke’s eyes.

He keeps his eyes open, tries to be gentle, the press of flesh, the exchange of breath, let’s Duke’s mouth open beneath him, remembers how this feels, wants desperately to feel it again.

“Nathan.” Duke whispers against his mouth, pulling back but leaning in so they’re all three sharing the same air between them, a current of molecules traveling from one body to another, breath to breath. “We chose to come back home, to you. _That’s_ what happened in Colorado. You’ve been sitting there all night thinking--”

“I thought -- you and Audrey --” It had seemed so clear, so inevitable.

“Almost, yeah.” Duke _huffs_ a little laugh. “I’m not gonna lie, but--”

“Look at me, Nathan,” Audrey says softly. And he does.

She says: “We were _this_ close, Nathan,” fingers dipping below his waistband, reminding him, sliding her left hand up under Duke’s chin, to curl at Nathan’s wrist, press him close where his fingers rest unfeeling at the base of Duke’s skull. As Parker twines her fingers around Nathan’s hand, it’s almost if he can feel the heat and warmth of Duke against his palm.

He sucks in a shuddering breath, squeezes his eyes closed against the _almost-nearly_ sensation, a memento of touch.

“This close,” Audrey’s saying, voice pitched low so that only the three of them can hear, in the night. “Duke had me up against the door of our room and -- I’m not gonna lie, Nathan, I really, _really_ wanted him to take me to bed and fuck me. Except you know what was missing?”

“I--” Nathan looks back at Duke, whose eyes haven’t left his face, who’s watching every reaction. Nathan licks his lips.

“ ‘We should wait until we’re with Nathan for this,’ he said,” Audrey confirms, leaning into Duke as Duke slides an arm around her waist, pulling the three of them closer still. Without fully intending to, Nathan reaches up a shaking hand, brushes the hair out of Duke’s eyes, traces fingertips down the side of his face. "And I said, 'Yes.' "

“This is _not_ the Troubles, Nathan.” Audrey echoes herself, as if sensing he needs it repeated. “This is _us_. You, me, and Duke. You can trust it.”

Duke turns into the touch, like he always has when Nathan caresses him like this, his lips grazing Nathan’s palm. And for some reason it’s this that brings tears to Nathan’s eyes.

“ _Jesus_ , Nathan, I’ve missed you. Only _you_ would be such an idiot to think--”

“You were _married_.” Nathan whispers, hoarsely, because it’s the most concrete of a tangle of reasons they hadn’t repaired things when Duke first returned. It had become his excuse: _Duke’s married, so I can’t … want him want to fuck him want to touch him want to hold him look at him talk with him laugh with him be his home at the end of the day …_

“But I came back _to you,_ Nathan! Evi -- our marriage was never about us. She had her reasons, I had my reasons, but it was never about me and her and what we meant to each other. If you want to judge me for that, judge me for that. I deserve it but -- I want you, Nathan. I’ve never stopped wanting you. I just thought -- maybe if you stopped wanting _me_ \-- maybe if I couldn’t fuck it up any longer because I was _gone_ \-- then maybe you’d stop blaming yourself, and maybe you’d start feeling again.”

“That’s …” _exactly the sort of self-sacrificing bullshit that Nathan would have done in Duke’s place._

And he knows that Duke knows that Nathan knows this.

“Yeah, I know.” Duke cracks a smile, broken and tired, that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not one of my more successful ventures.”

The look in Duke’s face is just too damn much and Nathan closes his eyes. He suddenly _can’t_.

There’s a rustle of sound, then, as Duke leans in with a whisper against his ear. “Go up with Audrey, love,” he whispers. “I gotta kick the losers out and then I’ll join you.”

“I--” Nathan swallows, blinks, looks to Audrey for -- he’s not sure what.

“Not a Trouble, Nathan,” she says firmly, keeping him close, and then turns her head as Duke leans in for a kiss.

It’s -- not at all what Nathan would have expected it to be. He had, in fact, less than thirty minutes previously, been getting steadily shit-faced over the very _idea_ of Audrey and Duke doing just this. In his head, then, it had felt excruciatingly lonely, like a door slammed in his face, like abandonment all over again. Like the day he’d woken up and realized the _Rouge_ was never coming back into port.

This -- this is something altogether different, something he’s _part_ of, the intimate orchestration of bodies and breath. He feels the jerk of Audrey’s fingers twined with his at Duke’s throat, feels Audrey’s deep inhale as she tips forward to meet him. Nathan listens to soft little swallows and sighs, thinks about how Audrey tastes of Apothic and Duke of Blue Sapphire. Thinks about how Audrey kissed him, and how he then kissed Duke, and now Duke has kissed Audrey, and how this is only the start --

How this is a door unlocked, and flung open wide.

Duke turns and lopes back toward the noise and light at the front of the Gull, leaving Nathan and Audrey, _Parker_ , together in the shadows.

“You’re _sure_ it’s not a Trouble?” He asks Audrey, looking at the place where Duke had been standing.

She takes his hand and tugs him toward the stairs. He can feel the contours of her fingers, woven between his own, the rough skin of the knuckles, the sweat on her palm, a snag on her fingernail. Clings to her like there’s an undertow threatening to pull him back out to sea.

“Yes,” Audrey says. “I’m sure.”

He grips Audrey’s hand, feels how her touch brings out the pinpricks of pain in his palm, and tries to believe it’s the truth.

For tonight it's enough that she's sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this one took awhile, and is so angsty fic peoples! I promise part three will be all about the sexytimes, and [my wife](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crowgirl) will make sure everyone has a lovely porny time because my wife is a demanding beta reader like that! 
> 
> All lingering mistakes are, as always, my own. 
> 
> My wife is also a Mainer. [Cold River vodka](http://www.coldrivervodka.com/) is one of our favorite local distilleries. And [Apothic](http://www.apothic.com/) is one of our favorite red wines. No money has changed hands to encourage the placing of these products in my porn.


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